Bring It On: End Times

Do
you believe that the Antichrist the Bible talks about will be
a person, an institution, a religion, or something else?

Maybe all of the above. I think when you read the book of
Revelation, you see a false prophet. He's going to be the one
who is actually doing miracles. The Antichrist will be a person,
but it could also be an antichrist system. We have in the Bible
that 'the spirit of the antichrist' is upon the face of the earth.
It has to do in some measure with the systems, with anyone who
does not confess that Jesus is Lord. You have all kinds of definitions
of antichrist. It is very difficult to say it is an institution
or whatever. I think they would have thought the Roman Empire
in those days was an antichrist system. I think that they would
think that Islam today is an antichrist system, at least radical
Islam. I think that those people would say that some of the dictators,
like Hitler, were antichrist. A person or an institution is motivated
by Satan. That is the big thing. Satan is motivating and pulling
strings, and it can appear in various forms and various manifestations.

What
does it mean that the United States is not mentioned in "end
of the world " prophetic scenarios?

In Ezekiel, there is a reference to the "young lions
of Tarshish looking on" while there seems to be an invasion
of Israel by Gog and Magog, the people to the north of Israel.
Tarshish was a seaport town along the Atlantic Ocean, not far
from what is now Cadiz, Spain. Settlers from Tarshish went to
England and to Ireland, and it is believed that some of them eventually
made their way to the United States. As such, "the young
lions of Tarshish" could apply to America.

During the final conflict when Israel is invaded by this hoard
from the north, the young lions ofTarshish are standing by saying,
"What are you doing?" They aren't necessarily in the
war, but they are somehow monitoring the situation. That is the
only real reference that may possibly apply to the United States.

Other than that, you might think of the United States as the
last of the great, enduring, Gentile powers, as noted in Nebuchadnezzar's
vision in the Book of Daniel? We are the successors to the Roman
Empire, the last of the Gentile powers that come down from Greece
and Rome.

Some Bible students theorize that when Revelation describes "the
mystery of Babylon, mother of harlots, who made the nations of
the world drunk with the wine of her fornication," it may
be alluding to New York or Hollywood, or other powerful cities
in the United States that have exported our immorality to the
world.

Other than these very subjective conjectures, there are no explicit
references to the United States in end-times events.